They’re the matters unthinkable, things only whispered, facts tucked into files stamped Top Secret. One by one, Dark Matters unravels horrifying mysteries from all over the world, presenting the twisted but true facts behind each event. The secrets behind historical events are revealed and further questions are posed. Were Russian cosmonauts left to float forever in space? Which invention did Edison regret for the rest of his life? What is the weight of a human soul? You’ll learn of disturbing experiments gone terribly wrong, others that should’ve never occurred at all, and the one experiment that inspired a world-famous horror novel. These dark matters and many more will be explored, leaving you with plenty of reasons to be afraid of the dark.

Philadelphia ExperimentIn 1956 astronomer and UFOlogist Morris Jessup received an extraordinary letter. It claimed that during World War II the US Navy had experimented with invisibility and teleportation in a botched test on a destroyer, the USS Eldridge. Jessup’s search for the truth will lead him to pay the ultimate price.

Ape-Man ArmyIn the 1920s and 30s Soviet scientist Dr. Ilya Ivanov began a series of disturbing experiments to cross breed humans with apes. At first he tried to make female apes pregnant using humans as the fathers. His experiments grew so grotesque he was expelled from French Guinea in Africa. But his research continued in Russia. Did he succeed?

Zapped to DeathThomas Edison was a great man, one of the inventors of the modern world. But even the greatest men make mistakes. Caught up in a commercial battle to supply America with electricity, Edison ran a disturbing publicity campaign against his bitter rival George Westinghouse. The campaign used Westinghouse technology to electrocute animals. Ultimately Edison’s campaign went even further, leading to the invention of the electric chair. It was a battle Edison regretted for the rest of his life.

Radio Waves of DeathNikola Tesla was a genius with a plan to send electricity through the air. But as his behavior grew increasingly eccentric throughout his life, his financial backers abandoned him. Desperate to sell his ideas, he suggested that not only could his technology be the ultimate weapon of war, but that he had tested it. Was Tesla responsible for devastating a remote area of Siberia ninety years ago?

How to Make a ZombieHarvard scientist Wade Davis became obsessed with cracking the secrets of the Zombie. His journey led him to the island of Haiti where he tracked down a man with something few of us possess: his own death certificate. Digging down into the dark world of the voodoo sorcerer, Wade Davis believed he had uncovered the science that explained the zombie legend. But had he?

Jekyll vs. HydeYou’ve probably never heard of Horace Wells, but he may have saved your life. In the 1840s Wells tried to invent anesthesia using laughing gas. But failure transformed him into an object of ridicule. Desperate to salvage his reputation, Wells experimented with a new drug, Chloroform. He had no idea of its addictive and hallucinogenic effects. In a drug-fuelled madness he disfigured a woman with acid. He ended his own life without ever discovering that he had been acknowledged by his peers as the inventor of anesthesia.

It’s Alive!Could we restore the dead to life? At the beginning of the 19th century, Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini suspected that electricity could be the God-given vital force of life. He began with frogs’ legs…but he ended up attempting to resurrect a human corpse. This is the true story that inspired Mary Shelley to write the classic horror story Frankenstein.

Tripping with Uncle SamCould madness be infectious? In the late 90’s journalist Hank Albarelli tied an epidemic of insanity in a small French town to the apparent suicide of a top US government scientist. Combining his own government sources with a detailed analysis of declassified files, he concluded that the town of Pont Saint Esprit in Southern France had been used as a test bed for a mind control experiment and that the scientist had been murdered to prevent him from blowing the story.

My Hand is Killing MeAre you alone in your head or could there be another, darker personality hidden away in your mind? In 1908 a German woman’s left hand began attacking her. She became the first recorded case of a new condition: Alien Hand Syndrome. Experiments later revealed that when the two hemispheres of the brain become separated, a new, often irrational personality can appear alongside the patient’s original one. But does this only happen when the brain is split in two, or could it exist in all of us?

Sexy Secret AgentWhen talk show host John Nebel married ex-model Candy Jones, he had no idea that she would reveal that she was a brainwashed CIA secret agent called Arlene Grant. She claims to have been the subject of mind control experiments in the late 50s and to have been sent on foreign missions where she was tortured. But was it true, or had Candy Jones developed a split personality during her troubled childhood? Truth or fantasy?

Full Body TransplantIn 1971, in the culmination of a series of gruesome experiments, neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White successfully transplanted the head of one rhesus monkey onto the decapitated body of another. A devout Catholic, White believed the techniques could one day save human souls when their bodies gave out. But would it ever have worked? And would we tolerate today the level of unnecessary animal cruelty that he believed acceptable?

Honey I Nuked the PlanetIn 1962 the United States exploded a 1.4 megaton H-Bomb in space. Scientist James van Allen was asked to prove the test was safe but given just weeks to do it. President Kennedy went on to use Van Allen’s name to prove the tests were not dangerous. The bomb created a radiation storm around the planet that took ten years to dissipate, blew out orbiting satellites and plunged parts of Oahu into darkness. They were fortunate it wasn’t far worse. Van Allen kept his own council until the test was complete, but then exploded, labeling it shoddy and unsafe.

21 GramsBoston medic Dr. Duncan Macdougall sets out to scientifically prove the existence of the human soul by weighing a man at the moment of death. If the patient loses weight, Macdougall believes he will have recorded the departure of the man’s soul, and science will have shown religion to be right. But finding subjects willing to die on cue is not an easy task. His experiment, and results, remain controversial to this day. Is 21 grams the weight of a human soul?

Missing CosmonautsAt the dawn of the space age, two amateur radio hams record broadcasts from early Russian launches in space. One day, they hear a heart-stopping sound. Someone tapping out a distress signal from space. Was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin really the first man in orbit, or did the Soviets send others up before him? Were they erased from history because they never came back?

Sound of DeathThere is a weapon you have probably never heard of. Some say it has never been used in anger. And yet several governments have called for it to be banned. When French scientist Vladimir Gavreau finds his laboratory flooded with a mysterious energy that has debilitating effects on the human body, his research is taken in a menacing new direction. Did he invent a new type of weapon of mass destruction? His work, and its military uses, remain shrouded in mystery to this day.